Aim while writing

[Praybird]

There is no 'should', it really depends. What do you want to get out of it? If you want to get attention, or if you want to communicate a certain message, or if you wanna make money, you're gonna want to write something that readers will enjoy to facilitate the meeting of that goal. If you're writing because you personally want to explore the idea, world, characters, etc, and thought you might as well share it, then if others enjoy your work, great! If they don't, so what? Either way, you'll enjoy the process more (and thus be motivated more) if you like what you're writing. Other people being excited about your writing can also motivate you. It can also add pressure, and that stress can be harmful. It's generally wise to balance both. If too many people like it but you don't enjoy the process you can be really negatively affected by the pressure to keep going, even if it's not what you want to do.

Literally this. Except for those rare interactive stories, I don't think readers will ever write the author's story for them; ultimately, it'll boil down to the story's author to keep it going. And for the author to keep the story going, their purpose in doing so becomes the most important.

Why did you begin writing, and why did you/do you continue writing? If you happen to only have one reason, say, your own enjoyment, then you're on a crystal-clear path: just write whatever you want. If you happen to have multiple reasons, like writing something others enjoy AND writing something you enjoy, then you need to look inside yourself and decide what this ratio looks like. If one desire's higher than the other, the lower one will have to compromise.

Recognizing your priorities will go a great length in lessening the stress you may experience from compromising a lesser prioritized reason. It makes it much easier to see what you've gained through that compromise, instead of sucking you down into a pitfall of what you've lost by compromising.